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MONTREAL—The signs of corruption are still fresh in this city but they’ve been joined by legions of political signs as Montrealers begin the six-week sprint to elect a new mayor.

The Nov. 3 municipal election campaign actually started months ago with campaign kickoffs and candidate announcements, but the leading teams are now entering a period of intense scrutiny for what all agree could be one of the more important votes in the city’s history.

With the resignation of longtime Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay last November, the crumbling of his Union Montreal party over illegal fundraising allegations, and then the corruption charges earlier this year against interim mayor Michael Applebaum, voters have understandably had their trust in politicians shaken.

They are now being asked to choose between a chorus of candidates promising to embody change, reform, integrity and all the other words that would distance them from their political predecessors.

Denis Coderre appears to have the early jump on the other mayoral candidates, if only for the name recognition he has earned in front of the news cameras, in his long run as a federal Liberal MP and cabinet minister, or from his hyperactive Twitter posts from community meetings, concerts or hockey games.

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His straight talk has also earned him fans in the city, as he acknowledged in an interview published this week in Montreal’s The Gazette.

“They want leadership, someone who will cut through the crap,” he said. “What you see is what you get.”

Coderre’s main competitors, however, have been critical that his team of candidates for city council includes 24 members of Tremblay’s former Union Montreal party. Also working against Coderre is the 2005 federal sponsorship scandal, in which Quebec advertising firms received federal government contracts and used some of the money to make political donations. The revelations that sunk Coderre’s federal ambitions remains a not-so-distant memory in the province where the scheme unfolded.

Businessman Marcel Côté, who is leading a coalition made up of old sovereigntists, federalists, liberals and conservatives, has also put ethics in the front window of his campaign. But it is questionable whether the rather dense, administrative reforms he is putting forward to bring corruption to a definitive end will catch fire with a wary electorate.

Côté’s team also includes eight former candidates that were members of the defunct Union Montreal party, whose senior members have been accused of orchestrating elaborate kickback schemes in which certain firms were expected to make political contributions to secure municipal contracts.

Projet Montréal leader Richard Bergeron hopes the makeup of the two main competing parties will be enough for fed-up Montrealers to opt for his own team, which, he boasts, is the only one that can give the guarantee of integrity.

“When we look at the two other major political parties, we see that this is where those who have brought us shame over the last few years have gone to hide,” he said Friday.

There are several other pressing issues facing the city including the future of mass transit and ways to halt the urban exodus when city dwellers choose to start families.

Bergeron, who has made the exodus to the suburbs one of his main issues, said a Montreal that is losing 22,000 people each year to the suburbs is also deprived of more than $40-million annually in revenue.

Meanwhile, candidates are debating the proposal to set up a tramway along the lines of Toronto’s streetcars, or to set aside more rapid-transit lanes for Montreal’s existing bus system. The provincial government also used the occasion of the opening day of the election campaign to make a commitment to expand the Metro system in the east end of the city.

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